Clinton pushes for Mideast accord

Odds for success low

Associated Press

Published Wednesday, September 06, 2000

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton wants to relaunch Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, but his national security adviser Tuesday said he saw little chance of a "meeting of the minds'' between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

"I don't see that happening this week,'' Sandy Berger told reporters at the White House. He said progress is possible, but added that "it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine'' a peace agreement emerging.

Barak is warning that he will give a settlement with Arafat only a few weeks to be concluded.

With those assessments before Clinton's separate meetings Wednesday with Barak and Arafat in New York on the fringes of a Millennium Summit, the deadline of Sept. 13 set last year for an agreement by the two Mideast leaders will likely be missed.

And the October calendar isn't much brighter, Berger said. A series of Jewish holy days will interrupt any negotiations between the two sides. Toward the end of the month, the Israeli Knesset will convene for what could be a vitriolic debate.

Roughly half the Israeli parliament is ardently against many of the concessions Barak offered at July's Camp David summit -- particularly a willingness to give the Palestinians local control of a few neighborhoods and suburbs of Jerusalem.

Israeli lawmakers are expected to try toppling Barak, but if he somehow manages to have a treaty with Arafat in hand by then he could seize the initiative and call early elections.

The new U.S. drive opens Tuesday night with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright calling on Barak at his New York hotel.

Barak has said it is up to the Palestinians to compromise, and Israel's Foreign Ministry said Monday the prime minister was not planning to present new ideas to Clinton.

Before the summit collapsed, Barak had offered virtually the entire West Bank to Arafat for a Palestinian state. The main stumbling block was Jerusalem, which the prime minister has vowed never to redivide.

Israel gained control of the entire city in the 1967 Mideast war, ousting Jordanian troops from the eastern portion they had occupied since 1948.

Palestinian refugees posed another hurdle, with Arafat insisting Israel recognize a "right of return'' for hundreds of thousands now in neighboring Arab states.

The senior U.S. mediator, Dennis B. Ross, presented undisclosed compromise proposals to Barak and Arafat last week, said a senior Palestinian official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The most difficult issue on the agenda is Jerusalem, with Arafat insisting on sovereignty over all of the eastern part of the city, including holy shrines sacred to Muslims and Jews.

Berger made plain the focus is on the Palestinian leader. The White House official said Arafat had "some very hard decisions to make.''

In another downbeat assessment, Berger ruled out a three-way "mini-summit'' with Clinton, Arafat and Barak.

In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, was a bit more optimistic. "I don't think the two parties have ever been closer than they are today,'' he said at a news conference.